Memorial Day. I know of no better, nor more enduring tribute to our war dead, than U.S. President Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address (see several versions here. The Nicolay Draft is below):
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that "all men are created equal."
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle field of that war. We come to dedicate a portion of it, as a final resting place for those who died here, that the nation might live. This we may, in all propriety do. But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow, this ground -- The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have hallowed it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here; while it can never forget what they did here.
It is rather for us, the living, we here be dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that, from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here, gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve these dead shall not have died in vain; that the nation, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people by the people for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Aloha!
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Tuesday - 29 May 2001
Vacation Day 1. Our flight from Honolulu to Los Angeles, with a connecting flight to Las Vegas, leaves here at 7:00am. In order to get to the airport by 5:30 (when the agriculture inspectors come on duty and we can actually get to the check-in), we need to be up before 4:00. So that infernal beeping sound is the alarm on my watch telling me it's 3:50am. Joy. Time to get up.
We do our last bit of packing, and at 5:00am, we call for a taxi. The taxi comes in about 15 minutes and gets us to the airport right at 5:30am. Check-in goes quickly and we walk to the gate to wait for our flight.
Boarding, on the United Boeing 777, begins at about 6:20am. We find our seats, rather narrow if I do say so myself, and throw our carry-on bag into the overhead bin. The aircraft is pushed away from the terminal exactly at 7:00am and we begin the long taxi out to the reef runway.
Once in the air they begin their breakfast service of french toast. Not exactly steak and eggs but I guess it'll do. The movie is Anti-Trust (hear Ebert's review here) with Tim Robbins. This is the one where he plays the head of a major software company based in Washington state. Hmmm. Which one could that be? As a coincidence, the person sitting one row behind us works for that major software company. I have no comment on the movie itself because I didn't bother watching it.
We land in Los Angeles around 2:50pm (PST) and hike to our connecting flight to Las Vegas. The Boeing 737 to Vegas has more comfortable seats than the 777. Go figure. 35 minutes later we are in the land of "da Boyz." As in, wouldn't it be a shame if da Boyz were to break yurs legs for not paying up.
A quick taxi ride (and I mean quick, the airport is very close to the Strip) from the airport to the Aladdin Hotel, our home away from home for 4 nights. The Aladdin opened in August of last year and has over 2,500 rooms. The hotel's casino covers 100,000 sq-ft. (sorry, I don't have my handy English to metric calculator with me) with 2,800 slot machines and 87 gaming tables.
With all that, the headline in the local newspaper (see the Las Vegas Sun article here) says the hotel is two weeks away from bankruptcy. It seems to me you have to be pretty dense to not make money in Las Vegas if you are running a casino. But maybe it's a sign of too many rooms chasing to few people? I don't know, but clearly something is wrong here.
Speaking of rooms, the room we have is quite nice. It is large and the bathroom is huge - as big, if not bigger than the one we had in the Luxor. Unfortunately, we don't have a view of the strip. I guess we just aren't "whales." One other nice thing in the room is a flat-panel LCD monitor and keyboard. They have a LAN in the hotel with a T-1 connection to the Internet. Of course, it costs $9.95/day but still, maybe I'll be doing some surfing after all <G>
Aloha!
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Hump Day Wednesday - 30 May 2001
Quick Updates. While I was away, Opera 5.0 for Linux went gold. As with the other versions, you can use the free version (as in ads) or you can pay $39 (USD) and be ad free.
Also released is the second service pack for Windows 2000. I see that fellow Daynoter Phil Hough had major problems with it and ended up reinstalling Windows (see his post here). Given his experience, I will wait awhile and see how others do before venturing into that dark abyss known as Win2K SP2.
And finally, Bush to California: "Go to Hell." Now back to our story.
Vacation Day 2. After yesterday's long and tiring trip we sleep in a bit and wake at the crack of nine o'clock. There are several things we want to do while here. We want to visit:
Being that we are staying at the Aladdin, we start with the Desert Passage (see the site specific link here). The enclosed and air conditioned ring-shaped shopping mall consists of 130 shops covering about 475,000 sq. ft. The ceiling of the mall has projected images of the sky and clouds, one section of which has sprinklers set into the ceiling. At the top of each hour, the "sky" darkens. Lightening flashes and thunder rolls. And then the rain falls.
If nothing else, it certainly is different. But again, there aren't a whole lot of people shopping, and even fewer buying (we never did get anything). Part of the problem is most of the shops are "up-scale." While it is true there will always be rich people, there aren't as many of them as us. And if us don't shop/buy, most of them don't survive.
Aloha!
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Thursday - 31 May 2001
Practicum Update. I start my practicum for my Masters in Public Administration tomorrow. As noted earlier, it is with First Hawaiian Bank, Trust Division. I will be there for six weeks observing their operations. As such, updates to these pages will be as and when I am able to.
Speaking of the Masters program, I got my grade for this past semester. Drum roll please: "A". With 14 credits down, I have 16 more to graduate. I don't know if I can keep an A average, but I will do the best I can given the time I have. And now back to our regularly scheduled programming.
Vacation Day 3. Its been hot here in Las Vegas. How hot is it? About 95°F, in the shade. At night. So what do we decide to do? Lets walk to the Coca Cola and M & M's World. It's only a couple of blocks away. Psst. Hey you with the heat stroke, the blocks here are about 1/4 mile long. Oh. Well, so it's not only mad dogs and Englishmen...
It takes us awhile to walk over but we eventually get there. Since SWMBO likes the Coke Bears she picks up a couple of trinkets and then goes over to the M & M's store. She loads up on coffee cups, in each of the colors, and various gifts for people at home. I decide to get a sampler of M & M's for the office. A bargain at only $19.95. Not.
Now that we're all loaded up, we head back to the hotel to cool off and rest. Tomorrow is another walk. This one to Caesar's Palace. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
This evening we go to the Stratosphere to get a look at the city from atop the 1,149 foot tower. They say it is the tallest freestanding observation tower in the United States and the tallest building west of the Mississippi River. To get to the top you ride elevators moving at 1,800 feet per minute or three floors a second. The elevator operator, who coincidentally is from Hawai'i, says the elevator is faster than the ones at the World Trade Center.
Unfortunately, when we get to the tower, we find it closed due to a power failure. Sheesh. At least we weren't in one of the elevators when the power failed. So we walk around the casino and do some shopping. On the way out, we see that power seems to have been restored and people are going back up. So we buy our tickets and stand in line.
After a quick ride to the top, we stroll around the observation deck and marvel at the sight of Las Vegas at night. In the clear desert air you can see for miles. If you get the chance, by all means take a look.
Aloha!
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Aloha Friday - 1 June 2001
It's Friday!
Local Update. The morning newspaper notes the highest spending lobby, during the just finished legislative session here, was the gambling lobby. They far outspent the traditional leaders - labor unions, insurance and medical associations. It should be noted that Hawai'i, along with Utah and Tennessee (according to the paper), do not allow gambling.
Perhaps not coincidentally, there was a big push this year to allow one Hawai'i resort, and only one resort, to allow gambling. What was that about the nose of camel and a tent?
In other news, NASA is scheduling a test of the unmanned X43A "Hyper-X" aircraft tomorrow (see the site here).
It will be the first time a non-rocket, air-breathing scramjet (supersonic-combustion ramjet) engine has powered a vehicle in flight at hypersonic speeds -- speeds above Mach 5 or five times the speed of sound. This is equivalent to about one mile per second or approximately 3,600 miles per hour at sea level and far faster than any air-breathing aircraft has ever flown.
Vacation Day 4. Today is our last full day in the land of The Meadows (the translation from the Spanish - Las Vegas. Apparently, unless someone was playing a huge joke, this arid land was once covered with grass). Tomorrow we fly back to Los Angeles to visit Disney's new California Adventure. But for now, it's off to the Mandalay Bay to look at not only their artificial beach, with its artificial waves (and women with artificial <whack!>[sorry dear]). But also the artificial reef with very real sharks swimming amongst it. Being much smarter than the average Coke bear, we take a taxi, rather than walk.
The Mandalay Bay Hotel is actually co-sited with the Four Seasons Hotel. And the place you get dropped off by the taxi is literally the most distant point from the shark reef exhibit that you can be and still be at the Mandalay Bay. So we walk. And walk. Once there, we pay our money and begin the walk through the exhibit.
Most of the displays are rather small and boring. But the final stop on the tour is the large shark tank, through which runs a walkway making you the exhibit and the sharks the spectators. Standing there, watching a six-foot shark come towards you with its evil eyes staring at you like so much meat on the hoof is an exciting experience.
Back to the hotel and we begin to pack all of the
useless junk meaningful momentos of our stay in sunny
Las Vegas. In the afternoon, I decide to take advantage of
the Internet access in the room and do some surfing. As noted
earlier, all that's in the room is a 15-inch LCD flat-panel
display and keyboard. The system they have runs MS IE 5.5 and
only IE. Nothing else appears on the screen other than the
browser. I decide to experiment and see if I can get a telnet
connection by typing in telnet://foobar.com into the browser.
I an rewarded with a login prompt. Ha! Success!
Once logged into pair.com's server I can check my email by using the classic UNIX email program Pine (which is installed by default on Pair). Had I known I would have access, I could also have set-up an HTML template and used vi to edit it for posting to this site, but I digress. So I check my email and am knocked flat by the news the that She Who Will Not Be Referred To has "died." Hmmm. I go on vacation and all hell breaks loose. I send a few emails and then start surfing the Daynotes web pages (if your access logs show someone coming in from Sprint in Las Vegas that was probably me). Given the "news", I am somewhat dazed and confused. But life goes on...
Have a Great Weekend Everyone - Aloha!
© 2001 Daniel K. Seto. All rights reserved.